Another fan letter set me thinking a couple of days ago. Like many letters and emails that I receive, the writer wanted to know where my ideas come from. As I’ve often said here, that’s a question wasted on writers, since it’s part of a much bigger question -- where does ANY idea come from? How did mankind learn to think, to reason, to dream, to tell stories, to plot, to plan, to evolve? The genesis of ideas is key to the genesis of mankind itself. Great scientists, philosophers and theologians have addressed the question as far back as history recalls. While I certainly think writers can help prod and poke at that great question (as I did to an extent in Procession of the Dead, and as I will do to a greater extent in book 9 of The Demonata), I can’t see any of us providing a nice, neat answer any time soon!!!

But what people are really asking of writers when they ask that question, is how do you get ideas for a STORY -- i.e. how do you develop ideas and turn them into stories or novels or plays or whatever. That’s a much easier one to answer -- we investigate. Writers are, in essence, story detectives. I think just about everyone dreams, daydreams, has nightmares, imagines themselves in other positions (e.g. wondering what it would be like if you were a footballer or a rock star or a vet). We all have ideas. But a writer isn’t content to let an idea sit idle. When we have an idea, we start asking questions of it. We play around with the idea, bounce it off other ideas, imagine different outcomes if we roll it this way or that way. That’s a how a story grows and develops. My books always begin with a specific scene. Sometimes it’s a long scene. Other times it’s just a brief flash. That scene -- that idea -- can come from anywhere, at any time. What I then do it stick on my detective cap (metaphorically speaking) and interrogate the scene. For instance, if it’s a scene of someone dying, and somebody else crying, I ask why the person is crying? What happened to the person who died? Where are they? How did they get there? Is anybody else around?

If that sounds a bit too simple to be true -- it isn’t!!! It really does work that way! Sometimes the answers come quickly, other times it can take years to figure them out. Pretty much like a murder case really -- sometimes the police find the killer within a matter of hours, sometimes it can take months or years. Sometimes a case never gets solved, and you can bet everything you have that every writer has ideas that will never lead anywhere, no matter how long or how hard they work on them!!! You never know starting out where a case/story will lead you -- you just have to take what you have, examine it closely, and ask lots and lots of questions.
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I started editing the first of the four-book series that I wrote early last year. I’m very excited about these dark little babies!! I can’t believe it’s taken me more than a year to do my first edit, but time just got away from me in 2007 -- I had lots of The Demonata books to edit, and then Collins bought my adult books and I needed to go back and edit them as well, and I was on tour, and ... Anyway, I’m back in the saddle now. Book One is reading pretty well first time round. I’m tightening it up some, but it’s not as stiff or unwieldy as I thought it might be. If the rest of the books hold up this well, my editing job over the next few years is going to be pretty easy -- touch wood!!!! Some of you already know what the four books are about, but for those who don’t ... I’m not telling!!! I like to read out an extract from the first book at some of my live events, and it has far more of an impact if you don’t know what’s coming!! For those of you who can’t make it to any of my events over the next year or so, don’t worry, I’ll be revealing all when the time is right, probably early in 2009, or midway through.

Spurs crashed out of the UEFA Cup on penalties last night. It was horrible!! The game wasn’t being shown live on Irish TV, so I had to listen to it on radio through my computer. We were 1-0 down from the first leg, but played well and scored near the end. We won the match on the night, but that meant it ended 1-1 over the two legs, and it went to penalties. We were one kick away from winning, but one of our best players missed his chance to be a hero, and pretty soon it was goodnight Vienna!!! Losing on penalties is a dreadful feeling. It’s happened to me lots of times. In fact I can only recall teams that I support winning twice on penalties -- Spurs did it in 1984 when we last won the UEFA Cup (I had to listen to that game on the radio as well, though the internet was a long way off back then, so I had to set for a crackly old radio set, whose reception kept fading in and out throughout the course of the match!!), and Ireland did it in the World Cup in 1990. But every other time Spurs or Ireland have been involved in a penalty shoot-out, they’ve lost!!!!! Oh well, at least we have the solace of the Carling Cup to cheer us up, but it’s going to be a fairly long and dreary last two months of the season for the super Spurs ...